The Sound of an Emptying Mind
by The Light's Refrain
Summary: DRABBLE ONESHOT - They were only trying to do the right thing. But their heroic actions cause unforeseen and bewildering consequences, and unleashes a force that threatens to swallow them both in its madness.


_AKA Pokewrite Drabble No. 18. Mostly the same with a few adjustments. Prompts used were precious metals, zenith, and technology. This is actually a fragment on an older idea I had_, _and the prompts just happened to fit._

**_Disclaimer: If I owned Pokemon...well, I still wouldn't own the glitches...can you even own a glitch?_**

The Sound of an Emptying Mind

"_It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane." -Philip K. Dick_

This...wasn't what was supposed to happen. Not to people like them.

Ethan Gold and Kris Crystal were just being what they always were: heroes. So when they stumbled across a fragment of Team Rocket working on a Unown-summoning machine, they were obligated to interfere. His Typholsion and her Feraligatr easily took care of the Grunts weak Pokemon. She only stayed behind to hold off said Grunts. This gave Gold time to get up into the main operating room. A few minutes later, the satisfying crunch of breaking technology was heard.

She expected the ensuing explosion, the zenith of their quest. She didn't expect the raw _chaos_ that rushed out like monster blood, the silvery substance ejected from the nothingness dimension that the Unown resided in. Very little touched Kris (the grunts got the brunt of the shiny silver plasma) but what little got on her chilled her to the bone. A few grunts who had been in the operating room staggered out, drenched in silver. Then Ethan stumbled into view, just as coated in the strange matter, and even more dazed. As the air began to warp, as the silver began to spread across the metal of the building like a fungus, everyone forgot their conflict and fled together as one.

They got outside, and mutely watched as the ramshackle base quickly became consumed in silver. Water became solid, and solid things became pools of liquid. The metal twisted and bent on its own accord. Some shards broke off and then simply floated here, as if suspended by an unseen string. Some fragments floated _through_ the walls. Some pieces even tottered along in an almost-life state, before either crumbling to silver dust or just toppling over. A few stray Unown darted about the scene wildly, before flying off into the sky.

As Kris heard the moans, she glanced to the many Grunts around her. Almost all of them had some of the noxious silver substance on them, and it was swiftly infecting the rest of their bodies. They groaned and shivered and even wailed in confusion and despair. For the first time, she saw them as people. Ill-motivated, pathetic people, but people. And they had hurt them! They..._where was Ethan?_

She frantically rushed through the mob of lamenting Grunts, seeing nothing but black and red and _silver silver silver_. Silver that was devouring them, silver that was entombing them and make them flicker like TV screens as if they were becoming _not real_, and then fading fading fading until-

She found him at the edge of the forest, leaning against an old elm tree. Already the tree was contaminating by the silver, the silver that was swallowing up her old friend, the boy she had known since first grade, the boy that-

_Run_, he said to her, or rather whispered. _I don't know...what I'm becoming..._

She didn't want to leave him there_. _She _couldn't _just leave him there. But already he was transparent and intangible and his smile was so sad and _knowing_ and what was she supposed to _do_ because she couldn't just-

But that was it. He was gone. Erased. As if he never existed. And all she could do was _run run run_ from it all, the vanishing Grunts, the mutating base, the memories, the regrets, the thoughts of his poor smile as he slipped from reality. This wasn't supposed to happen, this _couldn't _have happen, this _couldn't-_

_III_

She was dressed in his clothes. It had been easy enough to purloin some from his old house when his mother was out. And as far as anyone knew, Ethan Gold still existed. Kris's existence was more questionable, but that didn't matter, least of all to her. Because no one could know the truth, ever. Only the occasionally surviving, wayward grunt she came across shared her silent misery. But that was okay. She could live with that...

Then she began seeing _him_, only it was not him, not at all. He looked mostly the same, only the yellow in his outfit was now tinged green and his gray eyes were now unnaturally bright silver. And it wasn't just silver was shone in his eyes, but insanity, as he literally flickered in and out of existence around her, as he drew closer and closer, as he seemed to be almost himself at times, as he left behind traces of silver on her lips.

This...This Kris did not know what to do about. This was more terrifying than death. For at least in death there's certainty, a sort of stabilization, even in ghosts. But this wasn't ghost-like. This was...demonic. For all their heroism, for all their good intentions, they had unleashed something unnatural, inexplicable, horrible, something that was un-life...

Ethan had already paid his terrible price. It would only be so long until she would be claimed too. She wondered what it would be like, to stop being herself...

_IIIIII_

_So what did you think? Does it make any sense at all? XD. I've actually used the corruption idea (the silver stuff) before in an older fic, The End of Forever. Both stories are fragments from the same bigger story that is now defunct._


End file.
